Tonight, the bar’s mahogany caverns are swaddled with the usual crowd: tailored grey suits hang from Japanese businessmen who swap sips of whisky with pulls from cigars in blissful solitude, sixth dates replace define-the-relationship conversations with convivial head bobs to the music, the odd white guy – Australian or Austrian or Welsh or Dutch – Shazams each track as he glugs back highballs under the bar’s amber lights, me, returning to the bar after a year of distance, and, Takeshi, a few seats over, a fifty-seven-year-old movie executive and a regular at this particular listening bar.